


[ break my fall

by cighail



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, M/M, Sonja and Mikael are only mentioned tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 05:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10690236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cighail/pseuds/cighail
Summary: A lot of the time, he sees the world through frames.





	[ break my fall

**Author's Note:**

> hi! so, i can't get this off my mind. if i don't finish it and so something with it it's going to just nag me, so im gna put it here, and hope it's okay.
> 
> i read a great paragraph explaining manic episodes, and i kind of wanted to write it out. i'm not sure if it worked, i hope it does bear at least /some semblance, and if it didn't, well i still had fun writing this. 
> 
> thank u for reading

A lot of the time, he sees the world through frames.

 

For instance: a dash of vibrant green poking through bushes coated in snow, the sign of new life growing amidst a fading winter wind. Perhaps, if he could control time, the shoots would grow to his will and he’d record the coming of spring in two minutes. But reality limits ambition, and so Even forgets the idea as quickly as it forms.

 

In another frame, Mikael’s figure glows under a darkened lamppost and the evening swallows Oslo in indigo night. Even captures his silhouette with his eyes and films with his mind, directs the natural flow of Mikael’s footsteps as they swing into drunken rhythm back home.

“You’re leaving.” 

An orchestra swells; strings swoop into treble clef.

“I am.” Even says and the light dims.

 

One is of Sonja, back when they were young; when he was a lanky, acne-infested middle-schooler and she was just the Elvenbakken girl in a cute dress on a Friday night.

“Wanna dance?” she says, eyes glittering, and her smile is an invitation withheld from him until he says ‘yes’.

He teases, “What, foxtrot?” just to hear her laugh again. It’s not beautiful like ‘chimes in the wind’ but it’s real and raw and everything he needs tonight to get lost in the crowd with a girl whose hands aren’t lined with sweat and whose lips aren’t pumped full of cherry-red chapstick.

“I can dig that.” she smiles.

 

Now, when he stops filming, Sonja’s eyes are just a little darker, her smile a little forced, her tone a little sharp.

 

* * *

 

On good days the frames come naturally - more than that, they come _spontaneously_ \- and Even doesn’t have to direct, orchestrate, or create anymore because his mind runs the track faster than he can say ‘cut’. 

 

The sun shines brighter, the grass outside his porch is a myriad of viridescence, and the sky above him spills into the clouds all soft and pastel blue. His mind races with ideas, forming and fading as quickly as they come. The sea of life before him is the very picture of perfection, paint mixed with ease as dots and crosses moving in tandem like a dance without need for a song. Nothing is clumsy, or messy, or broken, because he’s chatting up the boy to his left like a best man giving his speech at a wedding: all the charm, wit, and jokes surrounding him in a flattering crown of compliments. 

 

He walks to school in strides. He knows where he’s going, what he’s doing, why he’s doing it. There’s a purpose- there are _purposes_ , there are thoughts intermingling thoughts and sounds amalgamating into the beautiful symphony in his head he calls his own. 

 

If the world spins he lets it. 

 

_Because this_ , he thinks, _is being high on life_.

 

* * *

 

On bad days (which are merely the continuance of a good day gone sour) frames emerge too quickly; pictures swarm into his vision, moments snap-shotted to near perfection like a glossy, over polished photograph. There’s an eagerness to the stutter in his words that is too overbearing, a shake of his head that crosses the line between light criticism and frustration.

 

(It’s in the walk, he knows, it’s in his I-have-more-to-say stammer and uncertain roll of his hips and the pitter-pattering of his heart raining blood like thunderstorms on sunny days.)

 

The worst thing is that he knows there’s more to come. He can feel it grow in his chest: unease, uncertainty, his mind contorting into something unhinged. 

 

_Like a spiral,_ he thinks, _spinning out of control. Starting in the centre, ending up in space, I’m falling and I can’t stop, I don’t think I can stop, I don’t think I_ will _stop, and if I do I’m only delaying the next descent so what’s the point anyway-_

 

“-hello?”

 

Before he knows it people are touching him, gripping the length of his arm, his uneven shoulders, questioning his reasons for crossing the same street for the eighth time in the past 10 minutes. 

 

Does he need help? Is he okay, is he lost? Is something _wrong, can they help this man, this_ _poor, sick, young man?_

  
“ _Sir_ -”

 

He’s never run home faster.

 

* * *

 

Today, he sees only fragments. 

 

There’s light in this room, setting edges and objects half-aglow where they sit, drawn in past the curtains and blinds that try their best to keep him in the dark. 

 

Somebody grasps the edges of his blanket, tucking them under his shell of a body in the gentlest way. Even tries to breathe, or speak, or move, but the sheets are like weights - filled with heavy, wet down - pinning him against a mattress that’s not his own. 

 

A while later, his lips crack open.

 

“What time is it?”

Someone turns to him slowly, steady breath tickling the nape of his neck. 

“Four, four thirty.”

“Okay.”

 

* * *

 

Sometimes it’s worse than he thinks. 

 

Sometimes, his mind is a ravenous cavern, a vacuum that sweeps all semblance of thought into a black-hole lodged in the back of his brain. He’ll wake up empty, reaching for frames and finding, in place of them, a blackness that feels so sickeningly tangible it makes him want to puke. A fraud that replaces every one of his memories, turns them into faded, black-and-white film with no sense or direction or song or life. 

 

* * *

 

But he’ll count himself lucky today, because sometimes -

 

_and he feels the warmth of a boy’s fingers enclosed around his own, pulling Even into a tangled mess of arms and legs -_

 

sometimes, it isn’t.

  
“I can’t decide,” Isak murmurs into his hair softly, “between kissing you in the next minute, or telling you a story.”  
Even finds, within himself, a coherent reply. 

“We can do both.”   
“Yeah?” he feels the curve of a smile along his forehead. 

 

“… Yeah.” 

 

* * *

 

It would be an overstatement to say that he is feeling alright; a lie, to say that he is feeling much better, or better than he ‘has ever felt before’ at this particular moment in time. The room doesn’t get brighter or warmer, nor does the lilt of a growing melody ring clear in his head. 

 

Still, there is a voice:

 

_“Look at me.”  
_

And it is soft and strong and firm; controlling the hands that tilt Even’s head upwards, controlling the eyes that gaze into his own with unrivalled intensity, controlling the lips that roam Even’s landscape of skin. 

 

Things aren’t great, but Even knows they _will be good-_

 

(“So,” Isak starts, “I was walking past the bookstore yesterday,”)

 

and that gives him the strength to breathe again.

**Author's Note:**

> (In the morning Isak’s hair is a blaze of flaxen yellow, smiling shyly into his pillow as Even’s eyes flutter open to meet his. 
> 
> “Hey,” is all Isak needs to say for Even to know that his world has gone back to being beautiful.)


End file.
